Tremendously bright pulsar may be 1 of many
Oxnard CA (SPX) Oct 30, 2014 -
Recently, a team of astronomers reported discovering a pulsating star that appears to shine with the energy of 10 million suns. The find, which was announced in Nature, is the brightest pulsar - a type of rotating neutron star that emits a bright beam of energy that regularly sweeps past Earth like a lighthouse beam - ever seen. But what are the odds finding another one?
According to one o ...
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Chandra Identifies Impact of Cosmic Chaos on Star Birth
Washington DC (SPX) Oct 30, 2014 -
The same phenomenon that causes a bumpy airplane ride, turbulence, may be the solution to a long-standing mystery about stars' birth, or the absence of it, according to a new study using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Galaxy clusters are the largest objects in the universe, held together by gravity. These behemoths contain hundreds or thousands of individual galaxies that are ...
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Hubble Sees 'Ghost Light' From Dead Galaxies
Washington DC (SPX) Oct 31, 2014 -
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has picked up the faint, ghostly glow of stars ejected from ancient galaxies that were gravitationally ripped apart several billion years ago. The mayhem happened 4 billion light-years away, inside an immense collection of nearly 500 galaxies nicknamed "Pandora's Cluster," also known as Abell 2744.
The scattered stars are no longer bound to any one galaxy, and ...
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Yale finds a planet that won't stick to a schedule
New Haven CT (SPX) Oct 31, 2014 -
For their latest discovery, Yale astronomers and the Planet Hunters program have found a low-mass, low-density planet with a punctuality problem.
The new planet, called PH3c, is located 2,300 light years from Earth and has an atmosphere loaded with hydrogen and helium. It is described in the Oct. 29 online edition of The Astrophysical Journal.
The elusive orb nearly avoided detection ...
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China completes first mission to moon and back
Beijing (AFP) Nov 01, 2014 -
China completed its first return mission to the moon early Saturday with the successful re-entry and landing of an unmanned probe, state media reported, in the latest step forward for Beijing's ambitious space programme.
The probe landed safely in northern China's Inner Mongolia region, state news agency Xinhua said, citing the Beijing Aerospace Control Center.
Xinhua said the probe ...
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Virgin spaceship crashes in US desert, one pilot dead
Los Angeles (AFP) Oct 31, 2014 -
Virgin Galactic's pioneering spacecraft designed to take tourists into space crashed Friday in California, killing one of the two pilots and scattering debris across the desert. Television images showed the wreckage of SpaceShipTwo, a test vehicle that flies to the edge of space, amid brush east of Mojave, a few hours' drive northeast of Los Angeles. ...
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Virgin crash sets back space tourism by years: experts
Washington DC (AFP) Nov 01, 2014 -
The deadly crash of Virgin Galactic's spacecraft has dealt a devastating setback to the cause of space tourism, delaying the first commercial flights to the stars by years, experts said Friday.
After several delays, Virgin Galactic had hoped to start ferrying passengers to the edge of space in 2015, ushering in a new era of tourism for those willing and wealthy enough to pay up to $250,000 ...
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